Midway 2014

In June of 1942 outnumbered and outgunned American forces of the Pacific Fleet engaged the Japanese Navy in the world’s most important and decisive naval battle since Trafalgar, a battle which determined  that World War II in  the Pacific would end with a Japanese defeat.  The American task forces’ three aircraft carriers, including the recently patched up Yorktown which had been made battle ready in an astoundingly short time after suffering damage in an earlier battle, faced a Japanese force of four large and two small carriers.  The balance in surface firepower was even more in favor of the Japanese, as the Americans went to sea with no battleships and fewer cruisers and destroyers than their enemy.  The main battle was fought on June 4, 1942 though some action continued for a couple of days later. It ended with all four of the large Japanese carriers sunk and most of their pilots and planes lost, with the Japanese abandoning their plans to occupy Midway Island, and with the United States losing only one of its carriers, the Yorktown. It was both one of the most complete victories in military history and perhaps the quickest reversal in the strategic positions of two adversaries in world history.  

After Midway the Japanese, who has swept through Asia and the Pacific in the six months after Pearl Harbor, conquering Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, what is now Indonesia, the Philippines, and half of New Guinea, and occupying numerous islands in the Pacific including Guam and two in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, never went on the offensive against the United States again.  Instead, just two months after the battle, the United States began its first major offensive of the war at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and remained on the offensive until the defeat of Japan in 1945.

 

If the victory had gone to the Japanese, they would have been able to remain on the offensive, probably severing  the line of bases in the South Pacific connecting America to Australia and New Zealand  and perhaps even threatening American control of the Hawaiian Islands.  There would have been no opportunity for American offensives until at least well into 1943, and the Japanese would have had much additional time  to strengthen the perimeter of their empire, and perhaps make the war so costly the United States would accept a negotiated peace leaving them with it.

Yet for all that, this year once again I find little or no mention of Midway in the news media.  The men who fought the war continue to die off, and soon will all be dead. The memory of what they did should not. Writing about it every year or so seems the least a person ought to do.